Monthly Archives: December 2012

Twiga Lodge – Againin Paradise at Tiwi Beach

05.12.2012
We left for Mombasa together with Dave, as he expected the arrival of her girl friend Gill and we had to wait for our friends from Cape Town, who we wanted to travel on. The drive was pleasant and with Dave it was a good experience to travel together as we had similar pace. In Mombasa we checked at a exhaust shop, if they could provide a manifold from stainless steel, but they could not, so we continued on to Tiwi Beach, to spend Xmas at Twiga Lodge Campsite, a favorite place of ours.

Twiga Lodge – Tara enjoys the place

06.12.2012 to 15.12.2012
They days passed at this beach paradise at Twiga lodge, we spent the days with working, good food and nice beach holidays. I also spent quite a time with my exhaust manifold. I knew a guy called Omari, who had a car repair close to Twiga lodge at the main road from Mombasa to Diani. So I went to him to repair the exhaust manifold again.

Again the neck was broken, so it had be welded again. Omari came to take the manifold out and together we took a Matatu to Mombasa to bring it to an Indian guy to weld it. It would take him a few days. But this was not a solution to weld it every couple of 100 kilometers, so a proper solution had to be found. I was looking at the construction, and came to the conclusion, that with this straight 6 cylinder, the exhaust construction was in general a misconception, because from the manifold, two pipes, each for 3 cylinders lead straight down to the frame, where after a 90 degrees bend the two pipes where leading into one pipe and that was connected to the frame. So what happened especially on rough roads, that the engine moved much more than on tar roads and thus the pipes hit the manifold that heavily, the the cast broke at the entrance of the manifold. So I had to find a solution, that the engine could move without the pipes moving. The solution seemed to be to fit flexible exhaust parts instead of the 90 degree pipe. Then the engine could move and the pipe stayed static more or less. So the other day Omari and me went to Mombasa to find these flexible pipes. Back at his workshop, he cut the pipe off and welded this flexible parts in its place. It worked, time will tell if this was a proper solution.

16.12.2012
Gil ws supposed to arrive at around midnight at Mombasa, so Dave wanted to pick her up. First he wanted to go by his own car, but there is always the risk at the ferry, which does not operate frequently during night and if there would be much traffic, it could take hours to get on board. So we advised him to take a taxi, as the taxis do not have to wait and know which time to leave to be in time at the airport. That is what Dave eventually did.

17.12.2012
We got in contact with another couple who was parking their Land Cruiser at the beach. Andrea and Georg, two Germans, were already on tour for a couple of months. They had started in Canada and drove down South America along the Andes and shipped to South Africa, from where they headed up to here on their way back to Germany. They were a young couple and we had a lot of fun with them.

18.12.2012
Martin and Christin eventually arrived at Twiga lodge, the German couple based in Cape Town, that we had met in Botswana a long time ago and who we had planned to travel on together. It was a great pleasure to meet them again and we exchanged our travel experiences. But as it happens in life, they had changed, we had changed, so it unfortunately was not so much fun anymore.

24.12.2012
We spent Xmas together, had a nice dinner, some glasses of wine and the next days, we changed which couple was cooking the days, one day it was our turn, the other day it was their turn. As Xmas was crowded already with people, New years eve was supposed to be more, Idi told us there would be probably 2500 people here on this stretch, we decided to leave Tiwi beach and spent New Year somewhere else.